This Maker Damned City
by Pie Rat
Summary: A broody moment in time, wherein Funny-Hawke is bitter and also drunk, and not really funny at all. Hawke/Fenris.


Hawke hates this Maker-damned city.

Sometimes, when he is alone (and he is alone often these days) he sits in the dark, and drinks, and thinks about how much he despises Kirkwall. The place is like an elaborate death-trap _masquerading_ as a city. All of the layers piled up onto one another are like the flimsy grass over a pit-trap, each one disguising something even uglier beneath it. High Town's corrupt sham of wealth and nobility sits above the elaborate mage-prison that is the Gallows. The Gallows mark the way to the docks, where workers and scavengers still tend to the remnants of the Qunari attack. The docks are preferable to the slums, perhaps even _with_ all of the bloodstains, and the slums rest above Dark Town, where the poorest of the poor go to sit and wait for death in the shadows.

And now he's the champion. Now he's not just wealthy, no, he's the Maker-damned _Champion of Kirkwall_. He can smile about it, when other people are watching. Mother would have been proud, at least.

Mother had always been proud of him.

Hawke pours himself another glass, and internally thanks Fenris for sharing the wealth with regards to alcoholism. It's easier on his nerves to just dull them altogether. Probably bad for his liver and reflexes, but he finds it difficult to care about those things anymore.

The house is large and quiet and empty all around him. Bodahn and Sandal are somewhere. Keeping to themselves, probably. Bodahn doesn't like to intrude upon Hawke's business, and everyone else is still dealing with the aftermath of the qunari. He almost wishes he was out there, too, but it's hard to get things done when he is. People keep mobbing him. They want to shake his hand, they want to thank him, they bring their kids over to have a look at him. Kirkwall's very-own special savior.

It would be easier if he hated the city's people as much as its walls. He could probably work up the nerve to leave, then.

His drink burns a little on the way down, the subtle flavor of it lost in the heady buzz of his head. Hawke sighs, and then finishes off the glass. He is well and truly besotted, he thinks, distantly. He doesn't usually let himself get this maudlin. The fireplace crackles a little bit across from him, casting odd shadows against the frame of his chair, and catching against the near-empty bottle beside it.

The hinges on the Amell Manor's front door don't creak. But they're heavy, old-fashioned things, and so they _groan_ like a punch to the gut when the doors are opened too slowly. The sound of them fills up the main chamber, and Hawke blinks, looking away from the dancing flames long enough to wonder who's decided to visit in the newborn hours of the morning.

Robbers, maybe? Particularly bold, suicidal robbers?

But no. The dog looks up, and gives off a soft 'whuff' of recognition, and then lays his head back down on his rug. Hawke glances over to him, and takes a moment to let the world stop spinning. If it was a stranger come to call then he would have growled. Probably.

He blinks, and tips his head back towards the door, and instead finds himself at eye level with something sharp and metal and shaped like a low 'V'. It looks familiar. Hawke frowns at it, and at the flash of red in the corner of his eye, until a voice rumbles from somewhere slightly above his head.

"You are… drunk," Fenris observes.

Hawke grins, and internally quails, because he's not sure that he has the energy to be entertaining at the moment. But he's already spent one evening grieving horrifically in the company of his friend and one-time lover. They don't need a repeat of _that night_ again.

He still hasn't been able to open the door to his mother's room.

"Only a little," Hawke replies. He manages to tilt his head up enough to look at Fenris' face. Almost. Fenris is scowling, but as that's his default expression, so Hawke doesn't take it personally.

Much.

One narrow, dark eyebrow goes up, and the elf shifts his gaze between the label on the bottle and the undoubtedly red flush to Hawke's cheeks.

He snorts.

Hawke's eyes narrow a little, and privately he thinks that the elf had bloody well better not make any sort of remark, considering the number of times he himself has been found in some dark corner of Danarius' mansion with nothing but a bottle and his misery. His own slightly challenging stare is met by an inscrutable one.

After a moment, it's broken. Fenris turns and leaves.

Hawke slumps a little into his chair. _That's rich,_ he thinks, without as much venom or vitriol as he'd like. _Him being the one on some high-horse now._ The neck of the bottle is slightly sticky. He forgoes the glass this time, and just drinks straight from it, and stares at the bottom until the sound of something hitting the floor beside him with a soft 'thud' surprises him again.

Fenris plants a chair next to his own, a fresh bottle in one hand. He falls into the seat, elbows resting atop his knees, and taps his bottle lightly against the side of Hawke's leg.

"I've learned that it is better not to drink alone, at times like these," he says.

"Wherever did you learn that?" Hawke asks, while the elf pours.

"I don't remember," Fenris lies.

The sit and drink in silence then, the only sounds that of the glasses clinking against the bottle whenever they're refilled. It's a very brooding silence. Very Fenris, he would ordinarily think, except that it was like that well before Fenris turned up. He drinks until the room and the fire turn to one great, ugly blur, and then his glass finally slips from his fingers and drops to the carpet with a _thud._ It rolls along the floor, but doesn't break.

"Lucky," Hawke says. Then his mouth splits into a grin that's far too broad, and he laughs. His face feels hot and stretched across his skull. "That's where my luck is." His voice slurs the words, he's sure, though they make perfect sense inside of his head. He points. "Glasses that don't break and arrows and blades and spells that don't hit. My whole family's dead, but the bloody glass _didn't bloody break._ Fantastic."

"Hawke…"

He looks over at Fenris, and really, that's much too much. The firelight suits him. It catches in his hair, makes it look blond instead of white, and puts just the right shadows on his face so that even drunk and exhausted, he looks like a painting etched in lyrium. Fenris is quite a lot like Kirkwall, Hawke thinks. The deeper you go the uglier it gets. The meaner it gets. The darker it gets, until you reach the bottom, and you realize that it's all just the trappings of one great, ugly wound.

He could leave, if only there wasn't a worthwhile person in there, too.

"Where would I even go?" he murmurs to himself.

Fenris stiffens. His gauntlets scrape lightly against the side of his own glass, and his shoulders tense.

"You could go anywhere you please, I imagine," he says.

Hawke laughs. He has to laugh at that, that miserable excuse for a lie. Anywhere he _pleases._ As if he were not trapped, bound by whatever web Kirkwall spins to ensnare former slaves and pirates and mages and Templars and Qunari, spirits and demons and abominations and Fereldan refugees. He laughs himself hoarse and then laughs himself sick, until he's kneeling on the floor, making a mess of his carpet while Fenris sits there in painfully obvious uncertainty.

When it's done he presses his cheek against a clear patch of carpet, and lies there until the room stops spinning.

"I don't see the joke," Fenris tells him. "There is nothing to keep you here if you wish to leave. You could sell the manor. Take whatever you like and bring it back with you to Ferelden."

Hawke blinks open one eye, and stares at him.

"...You should know better than that," he replies.

It's a little bit painful, then, to see the comprehension sneak into those over-large elven eyes of his. The silence that settles upon them feels like it lasts for years. It stretches on unbroken, even when Fenris puts down his glass and hauls Hawke to his feet. Drags him in an undignified tangle of limbs up to his rooms, and drops him on the bed there.

Their faces are close enough to smell one another's awful breath for a moment. Hawke rests his hand on the side of Fenris' face, and watches him pull back from the touch as if it burns. It's a brief, thorough moment of disconnect, and leaves him feeling like he's missed the last step on a long flight of stairs.

"No one is ever really free," Hawke says, just to see the pain of that little truth reflected in his expression.

Fenris straightens, and goes blank instead.

"Get some sleep," he replies.

Hawke watches him go before he gives in and closes his eyes.

He hates this Maker-damned city, and everything he's lost in it.


End file.
